MOBILE MARDI GRAS ROOTS RUN
DEEP
FOR THE MOBILE VISITOR, 1989
"The Wisdom of Chief Slacabamorinico"
Mardi Gras - that period of madness just prior to the austere period of Lent - had its American beginnings in Mobile. And while the term Mardi Gras is actually French for only Shrove or Fat Tuesday itself, the climatic day, Mobilians have come to loosely use it to refer to the entire period of frivolity and festivity. Although this quaint festival was brought to the shores of our country by the French 287 years ago, this is a relatively recent occurrence. What we now celebrate as Mardi Gras actually had its roots in a primitive agricultural fertility festival on the banks of the Nile in Egypt. From Egypt similar observances spread to Greece, then to Rome. As Christianity spread, the old fertility rites gave way to holidays placed just ahead of the fasting period of Lent. This new festival of Carnival spread throughout Europe with local variations.
Carnivals were held in many cities across Spain. The Fastnachtsspiel was given in Germany on Shrove Tuesday and France in the 1600's and 1700's was marked by elaborate masked balls and the Boeuf Gras, or fatted ox, processions of The Butcher's Guild in Paris. Mobile was founded in 1702 at Twenty-Seven Mile Bluff by Jean Baptiste Le Moyne Sieur de Bienville and the very next year, 1703, the tiny settlement of Fort Louis de la Mobile celebrated the very first Mardi Gras in the New World. When flooding at the original site up river caused the city to move to its present site at the mouth of the river in 1711, the Boeuf Gras Society was formed and a procession was staged each Fat Tuesday. Lead by a huge bull's head pushed alone on wheels by 16 men, the procession was reminiscent of those of The Butcher's Guild in Paris. The Boeuf Gras procession on Mardi Gras was to continue until 1861 when it ceased due to the outbreak of the War Between the States - never to be seen again. The Spanish took rule of Mobile in 1780 and in 1793 the Spanish Mystic Society, attired in costumes of white and pushing a cart on which a statue of the Blessed Virgin sat, began its torch-lit procession on Twelfth Night.
The form of Mardi Gras celebrated in the city today, with its "mystic" societies, came about as the result of the 1830 New Year's Eve antics of one Michael Krafft, a one-eyed cotton broker from Pennsylvania. Leaving the Old Southern Hotel with some of his friends after ringing in the New Year, this merry band came upon Partridge's Hardware Store, scooped up hoes, rakes, cowbells, and gongs and proceeded to wander the streets making a fantastic amount of noise. Arriving at the home of the Mayor, they were invited in for refreshments. Their "Escapade" was met with such success, after a few years as the "Midnight Revelers", elected to call themselves the "Cowbellion de Rakin Society" after the instruments of their first revel. In 1840, they staged the very first display of its kind in the United States when they rolled forth a parade with a title and subject. Six horse drawn flats (floats) carried out the theme, "Heathen Gods and Goddesses". The "Cows" no longer exists. Their legacy continues to live through the many mystic societies active in the city today, the "granddaddy" of which is the Strikers Independent Society, formed in 1841 - the oldest mystic society in the world and, insofar as organizations of any kind are concerned, are surpassed age-wise in this country only by the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Boston and the St. Cecilia Society of Charleston.
All festivities ceased with the outbreak of War in 1861. Following the end of the conflict fate chose one Joseph Stillwell Cain or old Joe Cain, the town clerk, to relight the flame of festivities in the city. Attired as Slacabamorinico, Chief of the Chickasaws from Wragg Swamp, on Shrove Tuesday of 1866, Cain drove through the Union occupied city in a decorated charcoal wagon, accompanied by six fellow veterans. This singular act, one of hidden defiance for the Chickasaws had never surrendered, picked the citizens of Mobile up from the depths of defeat and revived their natural exuberance and spirit, thus insuring Mobile's Mardi Gras for all future generations. Cain's Lost Cause Minstrels continued to parade each Mardi Gras until 1879. Today, the Joe Cain Procession "people's parade" which honors the revelry reviver on the Sunday prior to Mardi Gras is the largest of the season.
From its revival in 1866, Mardi Gras has grown into what has been termed a "25 Million Dollar Fun Industry" for the city. The 1989 Mardi Gras celebration will see over fifteen parades rumble through the city beginning two weeks before Fat Tuesday. Over 37 mystic societies will present masked balls, some as early as November. Throw in numerous other parties, dances, soirees and receptions and it will become apparent to native and visitor alike that Mardi Gras' roots of antiquity are deep, indeed, along the Mobile Delta.